


Foreign Travel

by Kit



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M, Goldenlake, SMACKDOWN 2011
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-28
Updated: 2011-06-28
Packaged: 2017-10-20 20:04:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/216617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kit/pseuds/Kit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Wyldon, resident expert, is sent to Carthak. Kalasin, resident Empress, is a good deal changed by her position.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She was the Empress. Light of a thousand suns; the delight of the countless minor nations—all sewn into the colonial carpet Carthak had made for itself with more tradition than its emperor could unravel in a decade. Kalasin the Beautiful, her grandmother had been. Thayet wore Peerless as if it were perfume. But Thayet’s daughter, in her own domain, was Glorious.

And Wyldon of Cavall was uncomfortable.

“I don’t think anyone ever thought to see you here, my Lord.”

She had been a still child, when she wasn’t trying to prove to the world that she was brighter and louder and more vibrant than a serious older brother. Left to herself, she had been more like Roald than not, her posture quiet and position underplayed. The sort to gentle new puppies instead of riling them up to barking frenzy.

Kalasin had little of that stillness here. She paced her own audience chamber, sandaled feet light at the precise border of carpet and floor. Bangles at wrist and angle caught every motion and her eyes were dark and curious, full of a deep amusement.

“I go where I’m sent, of course, your M—”

“—oh, _don’t_ , please.” She shook her head, setting off a tintinnabulation in copper and gold and brass. “Having you call me Majesty would be as strange as Papa calling me mother.”

Wyldon felt his face twist, and the Empress paused.

“Yes, My Lord. _Quite_ strange.” She grinned. An expression that owed nothing to her parents. “And, of course, you’re welcome. It’s only that you—if you’ll forgive me—are the _least_ likely candidate for an ambassador I have ever seen.”

“I believe you’ll find the Embassy is quite safe from me, Your Majesty,” he said, very quiet. “But your father did think it prudent for someone with experience to talk to your guard about Hurroks, since your latest infestation.”

“Of course.” It was Kalasin’s face that twisted, now. A faint, tired movement. “I was teasing," she said. "I know you don’t take it well. And Kaddar is grateful, and sorry he cannot be here to greet you himself. I trust I’m doing a tolerable job of it?”

“My Lady. Self deprecation was never a strength in you.” The words, loosened by a long journey and humidity that seemed intent upon stretching out every space between his bones, were out before he could stop them. The young woman flushed.

“You always did give unsolicited advice.” She paused, considering him. “I _like_ it, though.”

“The opinions of old men?”

“My lady,” said the Empress. “It’s a good name in your mouth.”  



	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kalasin considers Keladry and Sarai, and Wyldon is grateful for an absence of divans.

The door slid shut softly, and Lord Wyldon unclenched his jaw.

“You disapprove of Sarai,” said the Empress, shrugging slightly. “Many people do, you know.”

“It’s not my place to comment—”

“— _Really_ , Wyldon. Hag help it.” The faint oath came easily from her lips, her words sharp and full of everything save the delicate, Imperial gaiety she had displayed for the last hour. She leaned forward over the small table that stood between them—there had thankfully been no instances of divans, this audience. “You were never so reticent with my father.”

“Your father is—”

“—less prone to interrupting you than I am, most like.”

Wyldon wondered, briefly, how he could feel a smile twitch his mouth while the skin over his forehead felt ready to crack by the migraine that seemed to shadow any conversation with this girl. This woman. He did his best to hide both, but pain was easier to hide than the smile. “No one’s been brave enough to interrupt me in years.”

“Save the Lioness.”

“On occasion.”

“And lady Keladry?”

“Keladry of Mindelan is far too polite.”

“You know,” Kalasin mused. “I never did meet her.”

“You are…” Wyldon paused, considering her. “Quite different, in many ways.”

To his surprise, the Empress flushed. “ _That_ opinion hasn’t changed, then,” she said, over-bright. “It rather did change the shape of my life.”

“My lady,” said Wyldon, level. “Your father’s desire to protect—“ he looked around the opulent chamber, at the rings of office on Kalasin’s long fingers, the marriage mark between dark, Conté brows. “—or utilise his daughter had little to do with me.”

Kalasin smiled thinly. “Are you telling me, my _lord_ , that you would have been satisfied with my probation?”

“Would you have completed it? And convinced me?”

Kalasin leaned back, eyes lingering on his. “You disapprove of Saraiyu,” she said, mercurial enough for his head to pound, “Because she left the Balitangs to their civil war.”

She stretched and shrugged a little, and he could hear her shoulders crack.

“And she has profited, too,” she said. “She is very much in love with her husband. But Wyldon,” his name a jolt—one of those burdened fingers sharp at his chest—“Sarai is not stupid. She would have made a terrible Queen.”

“This is all speculative, My lady.”

“Sometimes I indulge.” Kalasin shrugged again, her smile sinking back into her skin, face taking on the still lines Wydon remembered from her childhood, but grown to new strength.

“I am a _very_ good Empress,” she told him. “I am unsure if anyone suspected this of me, when they decided to change my life. But it does mean, Sir Wyldon, that I am not scared to interrupt you.”

“My lady. I did not—”

“—I passed a probation of my own.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An Empress walks though kindly cages. This chaper, especially, is for Lisafer.

“Have you ever travelled so far?”

The menagerie, as befit all kindly cages, was a cool sanctuary in the day's heat. Kalasin, refusing to choose one realm, one collection of animals, lead him along in-between paths, while ladies panted behind and the trees rustled with unseen bodies as much as with wind. Lush growth, there. Dense greens and leaves bigger than a man's head; mosses and grasses that drank in water from air. There was a tangled vivacity about the place that Wyldon found both compelling and repulsive. Such was the place where the gate to the Immortal Realms had been opened.

“All Tortall, of course.”

Kalasin grinned over one shoulder at him, dusk blue veils blending with the plant shadows on her face. “Of course.”

“And Tusaine,” he said, slowly. “When I first courted my wife.”

“Lady Vivenne.” The Empress said the name slowly, wistful and curious. “Another woman who as unafraid to interrupt you.”

Wyldon tried to smother the laugh in his throat. “There are stories?”

“I saw the two of you fight, once.” Kalasin shrugged ruefully. “You were trying to do too much with your arm, and she didn't quite chase you down the hall. I thought she was very fierce for it.”

The air was too close. If he could not have Cavall, then the Drell would be almost good enough. The light, crisp strangeness of a new shore and uncertain welcome, when he had had the youth to bear it. Then, strangeness had been muted by hope, by the best wine he had ever tasted, by Vivenne laughing at the centre of a mottled, happy, tangled skirl of dogs, not _quite_ aware of him.

Now, the air was cluttered with raucous cries and flashes of too-bright wing, and Kalasin— Kally, the eavesdropping princess with a bow too big for her back; _Her Imperial Majesty_ , who graced coins and kept a notebook of all the court creatures in case they wronged her— stood in the midst of something Wyldon could not understand, and her hair was as dark and prone to snarls as Vivenne's had ever been.

His eyes left her. “She was as you say,” he said to the earth between them. “And she passed it onto my daughters.” He paused, but did not try to hide this smile, looking up to catch the wide, blue eyes.

Kalasin stilled. Wyldon did not touch her, but as he continued to meet her eyes he watched her chin lift as if he had tilted it up in his hand. Something darkened to lost in her eyes, and her mouth shifted from vulnerable to tight.

“My own children,” she said, “Are being taught never to interrupt me.”  



	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wyldon finally manages to fulfil his duty as a foreign dignitary. And Kalasin discombobulates.

The lecture hall was swallowing him.

His voice, amplified by some contrivance magicked into the roof, stayed level—Hurroks were more a concern than his own feelings of slow strangulation—but these words were still meant for a war table, a barracks room. Someone, Wyldon knew, had stood in one of these halls and speculated on the existence of Immortals, rather than tactics toward defeating them. Perhaps Ozorne himself had stood here, speaking of a gate that might be opened, with words as carefully projected as his own.

But their imperial majesties—Kalasin had been particular over the plural—wanted the university. Anyone attend. Anyone might see scars. They were more evocative than the words of an old man who regretted dinner.

The Empress sat in the front row, a little to the side, and the red robes she wore had nearly seen him stuttering.

> (“I’ll be there, my lord. But don’t think it’ll mean a new shock of ceremony. The university has different rules.”
> 
> “That’s the usual complaint, yes.”
> 
> Kalasin’s laughter had been twined all through her elliptical speech.
> 
> “Papa never tells anyone about one—uh—particular condition of my marriage,” she said. “I think he expected it to shame me. He was wrong—Kaddar backed me and was glad to do it. And he’s decent about it, too, now that the results are settled—only jealous enough for things to stay interesting. “
> 
> “My lady?”
> 
> She had walked to him, then. Dropped one hand to his shoulder, and there was heat before he could move. A magic shaped in the climate, seeping and spiralling through muscle and nerve, condensing on his bones like water on leaves, and his flesh and bone, as his flesh, blasted dry and insensitive to most healings, shuddered and acquiesced. He had gasped. She kissed his cheek.
> 
> “You’ll see.”)

 _  
The university has different rules_ , she’d said. Not that she’d _explicitly_ Mastered them. His neck, his face, and his shoulder all pricked in remembrance. Red suited her hair, her skin. And he could see she was trying not to grin.  



	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Boundaries shift, and birds are fed. He is to leave in the morning.

The emperor’s birds had pined.

They had been given doors. The Wildmage, rueful and small and smiling as she tidied away her chaos, let new skies into their heads. But they would not go. And while they were fed, they were not seen. Princess Fazia, her head full of steel feathers, would not have them even for hats.

Kaddar tried. But Ozorne had crooned to them. And they did not know what freedom was.

“Daine told me to visit them, once I’d married.”

Kalasin’s voice was almost lost in the rustles and flaps all about her. She knelt, letting seed spill in a swift, clicking stream from her hands. “I was terrified, you know, and so sure I would _miss_ everyone. And Daine said—well. ‘See the birds, Kally’” She let a hint of northern burr into her words, surprising her listener.

“I didn’t even _like_ birds,” she continued. "The world is too full of winged creatures that—”

“—abominate.” Wyldon looked down at her, noting that three striped finches were already making themselves comfortable in her hair. She was nodding slowly, careful not to dislodge her visitors. His lips twitched. “I am not sure that is actually a word,” he admitted.

The Empress laughed. “Numair told me one could make a verb out of anything.” She shrugged, reaching up to her shoulder to stroke one finger over a bright blue head. “Learning Old Thak, I’d have to agree.”

“In this, my lady, I must defer to your superior wisdom.”

“Are you being _funny_?”

Was he? “It has been…an experience, knowing you here.”

“Since I’ve gone a bit native?” She sighed. “And you’re _different_ by yourself, you know.”

“There are some things, my lady, which a man should not ever have to hear from attractive women.”

“Even if they’re complimentary?”

“In my cause, especially then.”

This time, her laugh was loud and strong enough to set wing-beats all about her. “I’d ask if you were flirting, my lord, but then the sky might fall.”

“I can’t say it’d be any harder than being funny. And you did ask. You were merely backhanded about it.”

“ _Backhanded_?”

“Coy.”

“Wyldon.”

They both paused.

“You won’t leave Tortall again, after this. Will you?”

“No,” he told her, slowly. “I’m not fit for it. But if I am—”

“—asked?”

She raised an eyebrow, a small movement letting her hair, tangled and feathered as it was, shift down her narrow back.

“Dangerous.” The words weren’t for her. Not truly. But she did flush.

“You can call me Kally, you know.” Her words were soft. Hoarse. She was on her knees before him, and now birds were flying away as she lifted her hands. Opals caught bright light that soaked air almost too thick to breathe.

Her hand rested quietly on his hip.

“No, my lady,” said Wyldon of Cavall. “I can’t.”  



End file.
